I know most of the people subscribed to this reddit know the proper procedures. But I felt a need to post this anyways in the hopes that at least one person learns this and doesn’t put the safety of others at risk:

(at the range)

Keep the weapon pointed down range

DO NOT CLEAR THE ROUND!!! (most people get this part wrong so I’ll spell it out)

Remove the magazine and DO NOT safe the weapon (if the round goes off it will damage the safety) and DO NOT LOOK AT THE BREECH. Keep hands/face opposite of the ejection port, if its bolt action, just wait.

Call the range safety officer and let him/her know you have a “No Fire”

Wait about a minute, and then eject the round. At the point you can choose to try and fire the round again or dispose of it.

You have a better chance of winning the lottery than being in a “hang fire” situation but you still need to follow procedure. I was at the range Saturday afternoon and a guy nearly took his thumb off, luckily he walked away with the small cut and some burns.

I actually asked the range officers what they normally advise and he said "3 minutes"... but in his 35 years of experience he has never seen a round that went off after 30 seconds. But the range rules are such that it would leave out any margin of uncertainty.

Not a hang-fire but I personally had a squib-load in my Glock 17 using factory ammo. I had good hearing protection too and I didn't hear the primer pop... it sounded just like the regular click of an empty chamber or an FTF. I regularly practice tap/racks using snap caps and I don't know why I wasn't in that mental mode that day but I racked the slide and noted the empty casing, then disassembled the gun to check the barrel. I was fortunate because the bullet was about 1½" down the barrel... more than enough to chamber the next round.

Removing that bullet from the barrel gave me a good understanding of why the pressure levels in a modern firearm are in the tens of thousands of psi range.

Anyway... not that this will ever be read but I thought I'd share what could have been a very bad day had I not been paying attention.

In terms of deciding to fire again or not, look to see if there is an indentation from the firing pin on the primer. If there's not, then it was a problem with your gun, not the round.

I once had a failure to fire with my over-under while I was shooting some clays. I was relatively new to shotgunning, so everyone there was giving me advice. Turns out that I had only replaced the spent hull from one barrel, but not the other. So the first shot dropped the firing pin on a spent shell (obviously this resulted in a failure to fire). But of course that meant that the next trigger pull was ready to drop the other firing pin on a live round. So make sure to keep your weapon pointed in a safe direction. Of course you should be doing that anyway, but make sure you don't forget in that situation.

omg I had a ninja point a AR at me last week when he tried to figure out why his gun had gone 'click'. It was obviously his first time shooting and I almost shit myself. I took three steps back and his friend grabbed the gun and turned it downrange, but for a second i just knew i was gonna get gutshot... whew!